The Most Powerful Money Habits You’ll Ever Learn

It is not easy to plan ahead when you are broke. However, your best option at a time like this would be to plan ahead. It’ll stop you from being broke, so that you can start rebuilding your strong financial future.

Those who have a good financial strategy save more money, are financially healthier, and live longer and happier lives. Those who don’t do this, face a ton of difficulties throughout their lives. For instance:

   People who thought and planned for their retirement majorly, somewhat, or even just a little, when compared to non-planners, end up with twice the accumulated wealth. Using a retirement calculator is also shown to increase a person’s likelihood to save.

   Those who plan for their children’s education save as much as 80% than those who don’t plan!

   People who plan for irregular, large and unexpected financial expenses are 10 times more likely to have a healthy financial life in times of monetary problems.

Some studies have defined financial health to be retirement and emergency savings, along with a good credit score, sustainable debt loads, and property. It includes health and life insurance as well. Your financial health increases with age, income and education, and that increases the likelihood of planning your finances.

Those who do not plan do not focus on future expenses. What they are doing is planning for the short term only. And that is like expenses for the next week, or next year. The problem here is they will have great hardship to remain debt free in the future since they don’t have a long term plan.

Getting too worried to plan anything

This problem is more common than you think. If you are constantly worrying about your financial problem, it can be hard to plan ahead since you are concerned with your current issues. Unfortunately, our brains are wired in a way that it over-thinks problems. That’s an evolutionary defense mechanism to let us get rid of problems soon, but if the problem is a long-term one or if it is too pressing, it can easily make one worried and unfocussed. A scarcity mindset is not a good way to be. It affects not just your personal finance, but your personal relationships, and even your job.

When you have less mental energy due to constant worrying, you can’t focus on what needs to be done to solve the problem. By the way, being constantly preoccupied with problems drops your IQ by 13 points, as does staying up all night.

Learn to relax

Here is what helps. Cut yourself some slack, seriously. If you are strapped for time all day, give yourself 30 minutes to deal with all unexpected things happening. If your problem is financial, try to save a bit of money for a ‘rainy day fund.’ Even a few hundred bucks can do wonders, and can take a bit of load later on in times of hardships.

Next, you have to save a bit more for yourself. This means saving a part of your monthly salary before paying bills.

Top Life Insurance Policies for 2021

 Unfortunately, no one is invincible. No matter how advanced science and civilization is now, there are still uncertainties like heath, disability and disease. These can happen at any moment. Because of this, one needs to get the best possible term life insurance in order to secure the financial future of his or her loved ones.

In our country, there are 24 insurance companies that offer term life insurance plans. Since there are so many products out there, it is easy to feel confused. To bring down your worries, here is a list of the top 6 term life insurance plans for 2020 and 2021.

These are effective enough to be useful during the hard times, and are sold by insurance companies having the best claim settlement record in the whole market.

Details of the life insurance plans
LIC Tech Term Insurance Plan

This offers all the needed protection to the family of the insured in case of the insured person’s death.

Features and benefits:

• Premiums you pay per year are deductible for taxes.
• NRIs shall be covered under this plan even if they are not in India but they need to be in the country for medical tests
• The company offers a free lock-in period. The policy holder can then return the policy within that duration if the person is not satisfied by the clauses.
• You can get the plan through an online application process without the need of intermediaries.

 
ICICI Prudential iProtect Smart Term Plan

This is a highly effective plan that offers a 360 degrees coverage at a very affordable premium.

Features and benefits

• The plan gives female policyholders an extensive coverage for breast and cervical cancer under the Accelerated Critical Illness Benefit.
• Policyholders have the option to choose accidental death benefit and the accelerated critical illness benefit.
• The surrender value is applicable to one single premium
• The policyholder is eligible to get tax benefits for premiums paid.

SBI Life Shield

It is a type of non-linked and non-participating insurance plans. It offers a high coverage in return of minimum premiums.

Features and benefits

• It offers 30 days to review the terms and conditions.
• Your paid premiums are tax exempted.
• It has two options: Increasing Cover and Level Cover. Both of these covers have the accelerated terminal illness benefit. Should you want to go with increased power, your assured sum shall increase by 10% after each 5 years of policy tenure.
• The plan comes with an option to increase the coverage through riders like SBI life-accidental death benefit rider & SBI life-Accidental total & permanent disability benefit rider.

HDFC Click 2 Protect 3D Plus Term Plan

This plan covers three uncertainties like disability, disease and death. It is mainly for women and children.

Features and benefits

• Policy holders who are women and are non-smokers can get the plan at a low premium.
• It gives maximum flexibility for premium payouts, terms and more.
• If you give premiums regularly, you can get tax benefits.
• This plan gives you as many as 9 options to choose from.

Max Life Smart Term Plan

This plan gives you comprehensive protection against as many as 40 critical illnesses, death, disability and gives financial protection for the family in case of the policyholder’s absence.

Features and benefits

• Coverage can be enhanced with riders like accidental cover and accelerated critical illness if you pay more premiums.
• It gives 7 variants of death benefits.
• There are various premium payment options.

Edelweiss Tokio Life – My Term+

It offers pure risk coverage. It covers you and your spouse and also gives the additional benefit of a limited premium payment plan.

Feature and benefit

• It offers a waiver of premium benefit under which you don’t need to pay the premiums if you are diagnosed by any one of the 12 listed critical illnesses
• It gives three death benefit payout options
• Premiums paid and received are tax free